DEVELOPMENT OF A 400 LEVEL 3C CLAMPED DOWNHOLE SEISMIC RECEIVER ARRAY FOR 3D BOREHOLE SEISMIC IMAGING OF GAS RESERVOIRS

Abstract

Borehole seismology is the highest resolution geophysical imaging technique available today to the oil and gas industry for characterization and monitoring of oil and gas reservoirs. However, the industry's ability to economically do high resolution 3D imaging of deep and complex gas reservoirs using borehole seismology is currently frustrated by the lack of the acquisition technology necessary to record the large volumes of the high frequency, high signal-to-noise-ratio borehole seismic data needed to do 3D imaging. This project takes direct aim at this shortcoming by developing a 400 level 3C clamped downhole seismic receiver array, and accompanying software, for borehole seismic 3D imaging. This large borehole seismic array will remove the technical acquisition barrier for recording the necessary volumes of data to do high resolution 3D VSP or 3D cross well seismic imaging. 3D VSP and long range Cross-Well Seismology (CWS) are two of the borehole seismic techniques that will allow the Gas industry to take the next step in their quest for higher resolution images of the gas reservoirs for the purpose of improving the recovery of the natural gas resources. Today only a fraction of the original Oil or Gas in place is produced when reservoirs are considered depleted. This is primarily due to our lack of understanding of the detailed compartmentalization of the oil and gas reservoirs. The 400 level 3C borehole seismic receiver array will allow for the economic use of 3D borehole seismic imaging for reservoir characterization and monitoring by allowing the economic recording of the required large data volumes that have a sufficiently dense spatial sampling. By using 3C surface seismic or 3C borehole seismic sources the 400 level receiver array will furthermore allow 3D reservoir imaging using 9C data. The 9C borehole seismic data will provide P, SH and SV information for imaging of the complex deep gas reservoirs and allow quantitative prediction of the rock and the fluid types. The data quality and the data volumes from a 400 level 3C array will allow us to develop the data processing technology necessary for high resolution reservoir imaging.